


For You

by moonmoth (greyvvardenfell)



Series: Fictober 2019 [28]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: (the apprentice's reversed ending though), :3, F/M, reversed ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 04:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23572144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/moonmoth
Summary: Julian searches for Reyja in the Devil's new world.
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak
Series: Fictober 2019 [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696495
Kudos: 8





	For You

**Author's Note:**

> For the Fictober prompt: "I'm doing this for you."

They say good things come in threes. I’d like to submit an addendum to that, or at least a footnote, and posit that everything seems to come in threes, good, bad, and indifferent. For example, I tried out two other names before Julian, but nothing suits me better. And I learned early on that the things I loved would leave me eventually, with the two strikes I already had under my belt in the form of my parents’ deaths and, ah, and the plague. But I wasn’t expecting the Hanged Man to intervene and save my miserable hide three damn times. Three times! First when I worked myself to the bone trying to puzzle out a cure, then with the hanging, and finally when the world went all topsy-turvy after… after…

Oh, my love.

I keep seeing the determination in your eyes when you stepped in front of me. How you could have possibly hoped to shield me from the Devil, I don’t know, but I didn’t want to hurt you by pushing you out of the way. Damn me! I should have tried harder. I should have done… something. Anything. Not just stood there speechless while you bargained with him, using your soul like a coin when you’re priceless. But I didn’t. I just gaped like a fish, like thrice-damned baby bird with nothing better to do than open my mouth and wait for someone else to feed me. And by the time the Devil smiled that repulsive, slimy grin at me, and you, my beloved Reyja, were turning around with your arms outstretched, tears running down your beautiful round cheeks, it was too late.

“I did it for you,” you wept, reaching for my hands. “For us.”

But you never got to me. The Devil, foul beast, snapped his fingers just as we were about to touch and you both vanished. I’ve been numb since then, I think, like he took part of me with him too. He did, really: he took you.

So I’ll take you back. That mongrel won’t keep us apart forever. I may have been powerless against him then, but he didn’t know what he was doing when he separated us. I have nothing left to lose now. I’m dangerous. Reckless. Just as broken as I was when I met you, but now I know why. And I know what will fix me.

The grandmas had a goat, back in Nevivon. Cranky old thing. Used to try to eat my hair when I would sit against the fence and sketch flowers in the garden. She gave great milk though, up until I couldn’t drink the damn stuff without, erm, severe intestinal distress. But the point is, I know how to handle goats who get too big for their britches: flap your arms around, spray them in the face with water, yell a bit. If the Devil wants to take the form of such a skittish creature, let’s see how he manages that, eh?

Oh, Reyja… I miss you. Where are you, darling? In all this vast, shifting color, where’s your silver spark? Are you calling for me, love? I call to you, every night, every time I stop to rest. That’s why I keep talking even as I walk, sweetheart. I have to let you know I’m coming. I hope you can hear me, wherever you are. I’ll never stop searching, if it takes me the rest of time to find you. I’ve lost you enough for one life, my dearest, and I’ll be damned and damned and damned once more if I do it again.

Well, if I do it again and let you stay that way.

Oh, love. You said you did it for me, for us. Why didn’t I stop you? Why didn’t I stop him? Why didn’t I…

Ah, it doesn’t matter, does it? Perhaps the Hanged Man didn’t save me after all and this endless quest for you is, in fact, my eternal damnation, all my crimes caught up to me at last. I always thought there was blood on my hands no amount of scrubbing could wash clean. You seemed to see through it, darling, or at least not mind the stains it left on your porcelain skin. But I always saw those streaks of red.

I love you, Reyja. As long as we’re alive, or at least cognizant of ourselves, that will always be true. I hope it’s true beyond that, even, that the fragments of me find the fragments of you after we become nothing but dust and starstuff and we meld together long after our spirits have passed on to wherever they might go. What, surprised a man of science like me might believe in an afterlife? Ah, but you forget what a change you wrought in me, my dear. You wove magic through my veins. I felt it with my own hands. A universe like that has to have something else, some way of recycling such marvelous energy, doesn’t it? And I hope we become the same new creature, love, that I might never be apart from you again.

There’s no way to judge the passage of time in this new hybrid world. None of the celestial bodies ever move; trust me, I measured them. In fact, my notebook is full of measurements, every one of them useless. I’ve tried to plot my way with the stars, but they don’t orbit like they used to. There are at least seven different suns now, of varying colors and sizes. Only the moon is constant, caught in a crescent just the way you like it, my darling. I suppose it would make sense, as sense works now, to have the once-changeable be stationary. But no matter how far I travel, it hangs in the sky at the same height.

I don’t know how to reach you, love. But damn it, I will find out. I will! You would do the same for me. I know it in my heart. What remains of it, anyway, without you beside me. I will find you, wherever you are, and we will be together, and nothing will tear us apart. 

I’ll do it for you, darling. 

I’ll do it for you.


End file.
